A network management system (“NMS”) is a combination of hardware and software used to monitor and administer a computer network. An NMS manages network components (“NCs”) of a network (which can include hardware, firmware, and/or software components) and the channels used to communicate among the components and between the components and the outside world. Typical aspects of an NMS include faults, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management. Tasks of an NMS may include, for example, discovering network inventory, monitoring device health and status, providing alerts to conditions that influence system performance, and identification of problems, their source(s), and possible solutions.
Network inventory discovery involves identifying one or more NCs in a network. Once the NCs are discovered, the NMS can provide management services and applications related to the NCs to users and administrators of the network. One existing approach to discovering network inventory is through manually entering NCs. This process can be time consuming.